Promoting well-being, preventing burnout

In our business, caring for patients and serving customers starts with hiring and retaining talented clinicians. This means that long after a clinician’s first day, we must continue to focus on the evolving needs of our people, create pathways for professional development, and eliminate clinician burnout by providing the required leadership and support to our clinicians and our customers. As a clinician-led, patient-first anesthesia services company, our promise to deliver high quality patient care is rooted in having the right staffing models, filled with anesthesiologists and CRNAs who feel empowered to create exceptional perioperative patient experiences every day.

The critical alignment between clinician, customer, and patient satisfaction compels us to understand the changing needs of our workforce and support our anesthesia providers at all points in their lives and careers. New individuals coming out of school with student loan debt and starting a career in anesthesia have different needs than clinicians who may be starting a family, seeking career growth, caring for adult parents, or nearing retirement. Knowing that the industry must respond to diverse workforce requirements, NAPA is working to be at the forefront of changing the traditional scheduling and staffing models used in hospital settings to help each clinician find his or her optimal balance at every stage of life. In addition to this we value the idea of downtime and ensuring that our people have the opportunity to disconnect and re-fuel to focus on their own needs and focus on being their best selves. That said, as we go forward, we will be offering tools, techniques and resources related to managing burnout, mindfulness, sleep, nutrition and other ways to help facilitate overall well-being.

Our approach to Human Resources—knowing that our clinicians and our employees are at the very core of what we do every day–is to ensure that we are always doing our best for our anesthesia providers and for our employees, so that they can in turn fulfill our core value to “always do the right thing for our patients.” This clinician-focused approach inspires us to build and nurture relationships with our people, with proactive components that include:

1. Meeting clinicians’ individual lifecycle needs. Because life and career goals may shift over time, we must continually work to identify and address what clinicians need to effectively manage their lives, perform at their best, and maintain a high quality of life—however they define it.
2. Competitive compensation packages. NAPA’s market-based analysis enables us to provide competitive compensation in every market where we operate. With market competitive benefits and flexible scheduling, our goal is to welcome each new employee into a high performance culture that continues to keep pace with high achievement and strong professional experience.
3. Ongoing professional and leadership development. Recognizing that strong anesthesia teams depend on strong chiefs, NAPA has programs in place to support chiefs as they transition into new leadership roles. These include ongoing opportunities to build a community with other clinical leaders throughout NAPA’s unique regional structure across 10 states, learn from peers and mentors, and develop skills in non-clinical areas such as business and communication to become more effective leaders. All NAPA anesthesiologists and CRNAs have access to excellent professional educational and leadership resources designed to promote personal growth and improve the patient experience.
4. Innovative technology. NAPA’s user-friendly, proprietary tools help streamline administrative and reporting functions, freeing clinicians to focus on what they love: caring for patients.
5. Strong customer relationships. NAPA’s regional structure nurtures healthy local relationships with our hospital partners, facilitating productive dialogues about optimal OR efficiency and staffing needs. Our customers trust NAPA’s data tools and perioperative management expertise to help them boost profitability while reducing overtime shifts that can lead to clinician burnout.

A successful anesthesia company is one that creates an environment in which anesthesia providers, customers, and patients can thrive. The right talent acquisition and talent engagement strategies provide for the right staffing models, but we can’t stop there: being a clinician-driven company requires that we create the right employee experience for every person on our team, throughout his or her career. Aligning our clinical and business needs to overall clinician engagement will continue to make NAPA the destination of choice in anesthesia, and support our clinicians as they drive superior safety and satisfaction for all our patients and partners.